The Pinkerton Labor Spy. 173
In Colorado a corporation which helped to blight competitive business in violation of the law, was able, with the help of the Pinkertons and of the law, to reduce its coal miners to a condition amounting to slavery.
And in Wyoming we find that while those high up in State and national politics are permitted to steal coal lands worth millions of dollars, nevertheless, a coal miner working for the corporation thieves is not permitted by the latter to say that his life is his own.
If the truth be told, the Union Pacific Coal Company is probably worse than the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company, in that it not only treats its miners as badly as does the latter corporation, but in addition the Wyoming concern has even tried, with fairly good success, to supplant American with cheap, foreign labor.
The first great fear of the Union Pacific Coal Company very like'y is, that the Federal Government may pry too closely into its questionable land manipulations. To guard against such an outrage, the righteous company has hired a multitude of lawyers, highly skilled in getting around the law.
The second great fear of the Wyoming coal corporation is that its poor, under-paid, miserably-housed, half-starved miners might be organized into locals of the United Mine Workers of America. To prevent such a calamity, the company has done two things. First, it has employed as miners but a minimum of Americans. The majority of their men are Italians, Chinese and Japanese, who are accustomed to such ridiculously small wages in their home countries that the wages they receive from the Union Pacific Coal Company seem to them a princely sum. Again, as very few of these workers understand any language outside of their respective native tongues, an organizer would have to be an expert linguist to unionize them.